Origin of Darth Vader's Lightsaber to Be Revealed in New Comic

A new ongoing Darth Vader comic book series is on the way from writer Charles Soule and artist Giuseppe Camuncoli at Marvel Comics. The story will pick up at the end of Revenge of the Sith just as Darth Vader joins Emperor Palpatine in viewing the Death Star.

Darth Vader #1 cover by Chris Samnee. (Marvel Comics)

Soule has seemingly become the go-to writer for Star Wars comics at Marvel with Lando, Obi-Wan and Anakin, and the still ongoing Poe Dameron already under his belt. In a phone interview with IGN, he described this new story as “Darth Vader: Year One,” comparing his approach to Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s seminal Batman: Year One comic that showed the origins of how Batman went from rookie vigilante to the imposing Dark Knight we know today.

“The book begins one second after the end of Revenge of the Sith. Darth Vader is in the armored suit that we see throughout the rest of his life, most of his life," Soule explained. "He is just awakening to that moment and that realization. So he has shouted ‘No!’ in the way we see in the film, and then it picks up immediately after that point. So we see him adjusting to that. We see him learning to be more machine than man. We see him going through some really, really cool early moments of his early mythology and history."

One of those moments will be Vader constructing his first-ever red lightsaber.

“The first arc is going to revolve around Vader's construction of his red lightsaber, because at the end of Revenge of the Sith, he obviously loses his blue saber when he gets all chopped up and Obi-Wan takes it to eventually give to Luke down the road. So we end up with a character who is known as having this iconic sword, like his magical red sword, but he doesn't have it yet. So what better way to start a big huge series than with a quest for a magic sword?” Soule said. “We're going to explore the mythology around lightsabers to some degree, which will be very fun. I'm really lucky that I get to tell that story. Seems like a big piece of the puzzle for him.”

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This will be Marvel’s second Darth Vader series. The first by writer Kieron Gillen and artist Salvador Larocca, which wrapped after a 25-issue run, took place between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, chronicling Vader’s fall from grace after the destruction of the first Death Star and his subsequent rise back into the Emperor’s favor. However, the Vader in this series is in a far different place in his life, which sets it apart from the previous run.

“I would say that in Kieron's series, you had a man who had been doing that job and was sort of accustomed to his reality in a way that this Vader is not. So [in this new series] the fire is burning very, very bright in terms of his hatred and anger and the things he's trying to work through. He's trying to understand himself, whereas Vader in Gillen's series was almost sort of an older crocodile that's been around for a long, long time and has no real enemies or challenges. Obviously there were challenges in that book, but this is someone who's very, very sure of his place in the universe and galaxy. It was kind of about topping that a little and taking that away from him and seeing what he did,” Soule explained of the differences between the two series. “Now this is more someone who isn't sure what's going to happen to him. He doesn't know if he's going to be alive in two weeks or 40 years. He doesn't know what his day to day is going to look like and he doesn't know what his purpose is. So it's about trying to understand that, what life without Padme is like, and just kind of understand what it means to be a Sith lord, because all this stuff is new to him. And really exploring the Dark Side in an open way where he doesn't have to be ashamed, doesn't have to hide from the Jedi, can really go deep into it.”

In terms of supporting characters, we’ll of course see Emperor Palpatine (Soule’s favorite Star Wars character), but we’ll also see the Inquisitors from the Star Wars Rebels animated TV show that takes place not long after this series. Soule also said that even though a lot of characters died in Revenge of the Sith, there’s a whole of people who could easily pop up. He didn’t get into specifics, although he did nix any chance of seeing Luke crawling around in diapers.

Camuncoli is best known for his work on The Amazing Spider-Man, but now he’ll be lending his talents to a character who couldn’t be more different.

“I'm trying to write Vader almost like Jason in Friday the 13th. Almost like he's stalking into a room. We saw some of this at the end of Rogue One. The way he approaches a fight, that was Vader. In Rogue One he's been doing this for many years. But our is Vader kind of in between. He's trying to figure out how to use the armor as opposed to the way he fought as a Jedi which was much more somersault-y and things like that,” Soule said of how he’s approaching Vader with his collaborator. “I knew most of Camuncoli’s work through Spider-Man, who he was born to draw. And Spider-Man is someone who's very acrobatic. And so the interesting thing is seeing him do or draw a character who is almost like a masked truck moving through scenes in a very methodical, unstoppable way. Not that he's not fast. Not that he's not powerful, it's just a different way of movement, a different type of movement. And also, getting the deep emotion into the activities, because you really want to be able to see past that mask and feel what he's thinking and feeling. You want to feel that rage. When he looks at you, you want to understand that he's about to choke you to death or if he's confused, or whatever the emotion is, but yet he's a man who has no facial expressions. He can't because he's behind a mask. And so thank goodness that Camuncoli is drawing it because he's able to do all those things.”

Darth Vader #1 will release in June from Marvel Comics.

Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.